1. Field of the Invention
The disclosed invention generally pertains to the field of common carriers, and more specifically, to a system and method for modifying the status of one or more carrier services based on one or more geographical delivery areas so that carrier service interruptions can thereby be presented to shippers to advise them of such interruptions.
2. Description of the Related Art
A common carrier is an organization that is entrusted with shipping an item for a fee. Such an item may be as small as a letter or a package, or may range to larger shipments such as freight or livestock. For example, individuals use UPS® shipping services to ship letters or packages throughout the world. In addition to individuals, many businesses use common carriers to fulfill their daily shipping needs, as well as to ship the products they manufacture to stores or distributors.
Responsive to shipper's needs, common carriers usually offer a variety of shipping options. For example, shipping services may be offered to various geographical locations with different modes of transportation (ground, air, or sea), or selected levels of service (next day, a week, three days, or over-night). Through provision of shipping options and features, common carriers are constantly competing to attract shippers by providing the best service for the shipper at the lowest price.
A tool used by many individuals and companies to help in selecting carrier service are multi-carrier shipping systems. Such systems usually provide an online web-based application that allows shippers to easily compare rates and services among multiple carriers. In addition, these systems may also provide integrated and detailed shipping information, as well as allow the shipper to pay for shipping and print package labels.
An example of such a system is shown in FIG. 1. The system is set up so that an organization's network can access the multi-carrier shipping system 100 via the Internet 101. Thus a shipper sitting at his or her desk can access the system 100 directly from a desktop computer 102 to ship a document to a customer or fellow employee in another office, for example. The shipper simply operates the computer 102 to launch a web browser and in turn brings up a webpage interface for the multi-carrier shipping system 100. The shipper enters information to indicate where the document is to be shipped, such as the address of the recipient, and the type of service he or she prefers, such as over-night air service. The system is queried and returns options from several common carriers systems 103-106 along with their prices for shipping the document under the criteria indicated by the shipper. The employee may then choose the option that best meets the shipper's needs or the shipper may adjust his or her requirements in order to see other shipping options and pricing. For example, if the cheapest it will cost to ship the document over-night by air is twenty-seven dollars and the shipper determines that is too high, the shipper may change his or her requirements to three-day ground delivery in order to reduce the shipping cost. In many cases, these alternatives are automatically provided by the system along with the price listing for the selected type of service.
Thus, in order to facilitate the operation of multi-carrier shipping systems, the carriers will provide shipping information to a service that furnishes the system so that the shipping options and pricing may be offered to the shipper. In some cases, the carriers may allow the multi-carrier shipping system to access the information on their systems. However, many times the carriers will prefer to provide the information to the service for security reasons.
A problem that is encountered by many carriers with providing shipping information to such systems is during times of emergency (e.g., hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, etc.) carriers may restrict shipments to specific geographical areas. Thus, service may be entirely suspended or guarantees for such services may be relaxed or suspended. Currently, in such cases, the carrier will contact the service providing the multi-carrier shipping system and the service will set up delivery service interruptions (e.g., type of interruption and area affected) for shippers manually by editing a database that contains the areas for delivery and the types of services available for each area. Many times, implementing such restrictions is time sensitive and manual procedures may prove to be too slow. Thus, a need exists in the art to allow such restrictions to be implemented in a more timely fashion.